Since I have been really enjoying the current run of Justice League Dark, I wanted to go back and check out its roots from five years ago.

I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as I have James Tynion’s work on the title, thus far. This volume serves to setup the larger story and form the team but it didn’t excite me quite the same way.

If I’m being honest, the team is a bit weak and only shares two members with the most recent incarnation. Those two being Zatana and John Constantine. And while Deadman is a member of this newly formed group in this series, he’s not officially in the current group.

This squad is made up of some obscure characters. I didn’t even know who Rac Shade or Madame Xanadu were until I read this. Also, Dove is here without Hawk. I’m not sure if he died or something but all this New 52 stuff messed up the continuity I was most familiar with.

The main antagonist here is the Enchantress and the story surrounds a girl that is sort of drawn to her or possessed by her. It’s hard to explain and the story did get a bit confusing as to what was going on. There were a lot of characters doing different things and the group isn’t a team here, so much as they are all working things out in their own way and find themselves crossing paths.

I did enjoy the art and the story isn’t bad, it just didn’t peak my interest in the way that would make me jump right into volume two. I already own that one and I’ll get to it but I hope it builds off of this in a good way and makes me want to stick around because the newer version of Justice League Dark has been spectacular.

On this volume alone, I’m not sold on the series. But it wasn’t a waste of time, either.

Rating: 6/10Pairs well with: the volumes of Justice League Dark that follow this, as well as the current Justice League Dark series by James Tynion IV.

This picks up right after the recent Justice League Dark arc The Last Days of Magic.

This was a big crossover event that was stretched over five issues: Wonder Woman/Justice League Dark – The Witching Hour #1, Wonder Woman #56, Justice League Dark #4, Wonder Woman #57 and Justice League Dark/Wonder Woman – The Witching Hour #1. The way it was organized was a clusterfuck but it was worth hunting down all five issues, all of which came out over the course of October.

In a way, this felt like Wonder Woman starring in her version of the X-Men‘s famous Dark Phoenix story arc.

The reason I say that, is that Wonder Woman has essentially been possessed by this powerful force that takes control of her body and makes her evil and incredibly powerful. However, this doesn’t quite commit to the bit like Dark Phoenix did, as she doesn’t really cause that much damage overall and she also sort of wills herself good again with the help of her friends and allies.

The force in this is Hecate, an ancient witch that actually came into contact with Wonder Woman when she was still a child. So, essentially, this Hecate thing has been in her this whole time. This seems incredibly ambitious and somewhat suspect but I have really enjoyed James Tynion’s writing, so I went with it. Plus, DC’s continuity is incredibly confusing at this point.

The biggest highlight of the previous Justice League Dark story was the cast of characters coming together to fight magical evil. While those characters are here and even more are added, this put more emphasis on Wonder Woman’s journey and lacked the great camaraderie I enjoyed before this. I hope that comes back in the next story arc. The Detective Chimp and Man Bat stuff was great in The Last Days of Magic.

In the end, this wasn’t as iconic as the Dark Phoenix tale but it didn’t need to be. However, the build up made this feel like it was going to be a darker, bigger event than it turned out to be. It really didn’t have any effect on anything in the larger DC Comics universe.

This could have been a good mega event, as it had a much better premise than the current one: Heroes In Crisis.

“I expect the worst, so I prepare for the worst, and when the worst happens, I’m ready. But my outlook doesn’t alter the reality of the world.”- John Constantine

I started reading the current run on Justice League Dark and I really love it, at least one issue into it. I figured that I’d give this a watch because of how much I was into the comic and because I’ve liked a lot of the modern DC Comics animated features.

This was a pretty cool film.

I loved the tone, I liked the choice of characters for the JLD team and is it possible that someone was cooler than Batman? Why, yes! His name is John Constantine.

It was neat seeing Constantine take center stage, where he outshines Batman and shows how cool of a character he actually is.

It mostly made me upset that the live action Constantine TV show was cancelled after a measly thirteen episodes because it could have kept growing and got as epic and awesome as this animated feature. Hell, had it gone on into multiple seasons, it could have expanded like the other DC Comics TV shows on the CW and Constantine probably would have had a whole squad, thus making that show a live action version of this film sans Batman.

Anyway, this had solid animation, a great voice cast and I liked how the regular Justice League characters were used in this.